Fairest of All (11 page)

T
he next morning, the Queen was breaking her fast with Verona in the morning room when the Huntsman brought Snow White in. She looked tattered, her rags soiled and torn more than usual, and her face was badly bruised.

“What’s happened?” the Queen asked as she stood from her seat almost knocking over a teapot. “My horse was spooked, I couldn’t control him.” The Huntsman interrupted Snow, “She was riding Lurid, my Queen, the new stallion. I warned her he wasn’t fit to ride, but she took him out while I was hunting.”

The Queen raged, “You could have
died
, Snow!

What were you thinking riding by yourself?” Snow didn’t answer.

“You
were
alone, were you not?”

Snow looked at her shoes.

“You were with
him
? After I
expressly
forbade you to ever see him again?”

Snow dropped her head in admission.

“Leave now, before I strike you; I cannot even look at you !” the Queen shouted.

Snow stood her ground. “He told me what you said, Mother! You lied to him, you said I didn’t love him. How
could
you?”

The Queen slapped Snow square in the face.

Verona looked horrified.

“My Queen, please!” Verona shouted.

The Queen whipped her head around like an angry viper and snapped at Verona, “Silence!”

S
now was in tears, sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak. Verona went to her side and wrapped her arms around her.

“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” Verona said bitterly to the Queen. “You have become a cold, wicked woman, and there is nothing of the friend I once loved within you.”

“Then you will have no trouble with my banishing you from this kingdom,
dear
Verona. Forever. And I have a mind to banish that incorrigible child along with you. But there is a life for her here. This castle has a use for her. The horse’s stalls have never been so clean. The outhouses have never smelled so fresh,” the Queen said sardonically.

“Majesty…” the Huntsman began.

“Silence! Or you will suffer the same fate,” the Queen barked at him.

Snow buried her face in the Huntsman’s chest and sobbed. He ushered her out of the room and Verona followed close behind. Then Verona asked the servants to gather her belongings, and after bidding good-bye to the familiar faces around the court she hadn’t seen in years, she left the castle.

The Queen watched her go, then quickly retreated to her chamber. She went to the mirror, but she feared the Slave’s reply. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him. She couldn’t bear hearing that she wasn’t the fairest, not this evening. So she retired to bed. And the next morning she awoke feeling a new rush of energy. Verona was far away from court. She was sure the Slave in the mirror would put her heart at ease.

“Magic Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

“You are, my Queen….”

The Queen felt uneasy.

“I sense hesitation in your voice, Slave. Speak to me,” the Queen said.

“You are the fairest, Majesty. But do not ask me to advise on the state of your heart.”

The Queen spat upon the mirrored glass, then whipped up her cape and stormed from the room as the Slave in the Magic Mirror disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke.

“S
how me Snow White!”

Snow White was running in the dark forest, full of fear and anguish. She was panic-stricken, alone, and heading back to the castle. Back to her stepmother, who would surely have the Huntsman punished for attempting to hurt her, and weaving lies that she plotted her own daughter’s death.

“Foolish girl.”

The forest came alive; it was visceral and dangerous. It wanted Snow White’s life. The Queen’s rage penetrated the trees, bringing their leafless limbs to life. As if they were hands, the tree branches scratched and grabbed at Snow, entrapping her, pinning her to the ground. They wrapped themselves around her neck, choking her, and clawing at her chest for her heart. The forest would do what the Huntsman could not. Snow’s eyes filled with terror, she cried out, “Momma, please help me!” The Queen’s heart melted in that moment. The trees released Snow White from their clutches.

The girl ran deep into the forest, where the trees obscured the sky completely. She was in pure darkness, surrounded by glowing eyes peering at her menacingly. She was alone in fear, and she ran, not knowing if the path would take her to safety or to death. The Queen’s magic could not go where Snow wandered—she escaped out of the forest and out of the Queen’s view.

T
he Queen jolted awake. She felt a freezing chill and desired nothing but the warm comfort of her bed. She stayed there for days, conjuring only the energy to make a daily visit to the Magic Mirror, and an occasional walk to the window to make sure Snow White was scrubbing away at the castle, and avoiding that meddlesome Prince.

Even from afar, she noticed how beautiful Snow had become. Not only in outward appearance but, like her father, in her pure heart. It would not be long before…No, the Queen could not permit herself to think it.

She felt alone, forsaken by her husband, and now Snow was away from her as well. No, that was a dream. Or was it? Everything in her life seemed to be tangled up now—dreams and reality, fantasy and nightmares. She felt that she had become something other than human, something completely alien to herself. She wondered if her father had lived his days in such a state. These days she saw much of him within herself.

Late one night she woke with her nightdress soaked in sweat; she felt weak and every part of her ached. She got up and poured some water into her washing bowl to cool herself when she noticed something upon the floor. It was blood—pools of it—mingling with footprints, leading from the Queen’s bedside out her chamber door. The Queen took a torch for light and followed the bloody trail out the castle and into the forest.

The forest was blackened, as if ravaged by a fire; there was no light from the moon or stars. It was a dead place, ruined by her jealousy and hate. The only source of light was the torch she carried. The bloody trail finally ended. A heart was clasped within the clawlike branches of a dead tree, looking like a strange, bleeding fruit, blood glistening on the branches in the torchlight. The Queen just stood there, feeling empty and alone, terror gripping her own heart.

“Momma?” The Queen turned with a start.

Standing there was Snow, a child once more. Her face whiter than death, her eyes black holes, and her white dress covered in blood. “Momma, can I please have my heart back?”

The Queen screamed. What had she done?

“Your Majesty, please wake up! You’re having a nightmare,” Tilley insisted.

“My little girl needs me. She came here last night…because she needs me! The forest took her heart!”

Her chambermaid just looked at her, bewildered.

“No, my Queen, Snow White is in the courtyard; she’s fine.”

“But the blood on the floor! It’s there, see!”

“You must have broken something in the night and stepped on the glass. Majesty, you’ve been ill.”

“No, it is Snow White’s blood. She came here in the night, I swear!”

“Look at your feet, Majesty, they’re filthy and
bleeding
. You’re sick, please go back to sleep, you need your rest.”

“Leave me alone, you idiotic wench.”

“But, Your Majesty, I should tend to your—”

“I said
leave
!”

The Queen stared at the blood and glass on her chamber floor. Snow had come to her in the night—she knew it! Her little girl was lost and alone and searching for her heart. Although she had been doing little more than sleeping these past few days, she passed out from exhaustion once more.

* * *

“Y
ou must kill Snow White if you want to survive, if you desire your beauty back.”

She would rather rid herself of the mirror and let herself die.

“If Snow White lives, it will be slow and painful, daughter. You would linger unto death for many years, your soul rotting away within you, withering your body to a husk; everyone will look upon you with pity and disgust. You will wish for death and feel no release even after they have buried you deep within the ground. The magic of the mirror—the spells of the sisters—will keep you alive even in the darkness. You will suffer for death, feel the need for it, want to seek it out, but your body will not be able to enforce your will. You will be trapped within yourself, alone and in agony.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’ve hated you from the day you came into this world.”

“All of this was lies then? Why?”

“Revenge, for your mother’s death, for the breaking of my soul.”

The Queen woke again, remembering her father’s words from her dream. She remembered saying similar words to Verona about the loss of her husband. She was feverish and ill, and her mind wasn’t her own. Why were these thoughts invading her? She fought against them but couldn’t help but feel that she had wasted her life, for vain wishes and a love her father never had for her. And now she was going to be forced to kill her daughter.

No, that was a dream. The mirror had no hold over her.

Her mind was muddled; she couldn’t determine reality from nightmares and found that she was unable to keep herself awake, instead falling back into her fevered dreamscape.…

She was looking into her mirror, “I am like you, Father. I have forsaken my daughter. I despise her beauty.”

“You have
always
been like me. A part of me lives within you; you share my blood. We are bound by that and by the magic of the mirror. Part of my soul is in you.”

“We own your soul,” the sisters’ voices came. “If your soul is in her, she is ours as well. Just as your wife was, before we took her!”

“No one owns me!” the Queen shouted.

The sisters laughed, then faded away.

The Queen stumbled out of her chamber feeling numb and walked the familiar path she and Snow White used to wander when Snow was still a little girl. Time had completely gotten away from her and she ended up walking much farther than she had intended. She was in the Dead Wood again. Everything was blackened and it reeked of sulfur. She had done this. Her hate and fear not only ruined this forest but the entirety of her life. Everything was lost to her now. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something green and red in the black emptiness. It was a bright, shiny apple hanging from a tree in this Dead Wood. She wondered how she hadn’t noticed it right away—it looked remarkable and uncanny among the dead trees. Something about it gave her hope. She took the brilliant apple from the dead tree, put it into the folds of her simple dress, and pulled her shawl over her head and made her way to a tiny cottage deep within the woods.

As the Queen woke from her feverish dream, Tilley was putting a cool washcloth to her head.

“I need something to eat. An…an apple,” the Queen muttered through parched lips.

Tilley took the cloth from the Queen’s forehead and placed it in a bowl of cool rosewater.

“You’ve been dreaming, my Queen.” And she went on, “Snow is outside and would like to see you.”

The Queen almost turned her away, but then thought better of it.

“Yes, ask her to come in.”

Tilley called to the attendant by the door and Snow White entered the room. She was so beautiful. The sun seemed to follow her wherever she went. The rags she wore only accentuated her beauty by contrasting it with their raggedness. She was so young, so sweet, so
fair
.

“I’m sorry you’re so ill, Mother. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“There is. Please, would you please find me an apple? The reddest and shiniest you can find?” the Queen asked, as Tilley continued to wipe down her forehead.

Snow looked to the chambermaid who returned her weary look.

“Of course, Mother, I will pick you an apple if you’d like,” Snow White said.

“Thank you, my little bird,” replied the Queen, drifting in and out of her dream state.

The Queen came to a large moss-covered tree where she knew a sleep-inducing root would grow, because it thrived in dark and dampness. Feeling icy and wicked, she dug in the earth. The root was there as she had thought. She took out her little dagger and cut the root open; its oils spilled out all over her hands, reminding her of blood. She felt evil—a chill coming over her. What had caused her to commit such foul acts? She rubbed the oily substance from the root onto the apple. It would make Snow sleep, a deathlike sleep. Perhaps the Queen should take a bite of the apple, too, and then she could be with her daughter without fear of hurting her.

She ventured through the forest and came to a clearing in the wood, and there were gathered the sisters.

“So—”

“You have discovered—”

“The poison apple, have you?”

Then, the sisters took the Queen by her arms and dragged her to the far end of the clearing. The Magic Mirror was there, and Lucinda held the Queen in front of it, while Martha and Ruby stood alongside, gawking at the Queen’s reflection.

Her face—her beautiful face—melted into a wrinkled old mess, lined with the marks of age and dotted with warts. She could smell her own breath and it was foul, befitting her rotting teeth. She was a hag—an old, vile, disgusting witch.

The sisters laughed as the Queen tore away from them. It was difficult for her to run, since her back was now hunched in this new body.

She ran and ran through the forest, as fast as her legs would carry her. And then she came to a cottage. Snow was there. But she would not recognize her now.

The girl—a woman now—was so beautiful. But something was wrong, she didn’t seem her vibrant self, something within her had changed. In that moment, the Queen understood. She had taken her heart. Not physically. No, she still lived. But the Queen had taken her daughter’s spirit when she had forsaken her. Snow was talking to stray animals; she seemed to have many of them about the cottage and within. She wondered if the ordeal had made Snow’s mind unsound; the thought crushed her heart. The Queen wondered if even in this state—looking like an old hag and Snow White delirious with fear and grief—the girl might recognize her. Something in Snow’s eyes told her she did.

But it wasn’t possible.

Holding a little bird in her hand, Snow smiled at the old woman with that little smile of hers. She looked like a child again. A beautiful child. A beautiful woman. Surely, more beautiful than the Queen.

“Hello, my dear, how are you today?”

Snow White just stood there staring at her as if mesmerized. “I have a gift for you, my sweet,” said the Queen, handing the apple to her daughter. Snow looked into her mother’s eyes as she took the apple.

Snow White took a bite almost absentmindedly and then quickly fell to the ground, the apple still in her hand.

And just before she closed her eyes she said, “But my dream has already come true, Momma. You came for me as I knew you would. I love you….”

The Queen bent down and kissed her daughter and whispered in her ear, “Oh, I love you, too, my little bird. I love you so much.”